Saturday, March 7, 2015

Gooey, Bubbly Elements & The Supreme Court!

Playing with chemical reactions is just too much fun to stop! So…we decided to have one last go at the gooey, bubbly world of creating chemical reactions with elements! We zoned in on two easy and high interest experiments today, as well as exploring the Supreme Court, through our dress-up theme. Lastly, we expanded our review time - to support all those in our group going for Memory Master (8 kids), by rotating through review stations for the various subjects.

Here Comes the Judge!

The kids had too much fun playing Judges! There were lots of pretend courtroom arguments over cases, and many objections flying around! It was lots of fun to see them act it out. We even decided to have them sit for a formal Supreme Court photo op! =)

Playing with Polymers

We began by exploring the element of boron, and what chemical reaction we could make with polyvinyl acetate (better known as Elmer's Glue). We took water, borax, glue, and food coloring (which I substituted with beet juice to eliminate the dyes). The reaction once you add the borax dissolved in water to the glue, is immediate, and very fun! This has an awesome feel and lasts for a long time. We then read about what a polymer was, and discussed what chemical reaction we just made. My kids loved this polymer and played with it repeatedly.

The assembling of ingredients...

Then the WOW!

Repeatable Lava Lamps!

So I say repeatable, because this one the kids can do over and over again, as many times as they like! How cool is that? All it took was 3/4 vegetable oil and 1/4 water, along with some food coloring and Alka Seltzer tablets! Viola! A lava lamp. (You could put it in a pretty glass bottle with a resealable cap, if you really wanted to get fancy!) The kids could then cap the mixture in the bottle and take it with them, along with the Alka Seltzer, to repeat the experiment for their Dad or friends. You can do it over and over again, by just adding the Alka Seltzer each time. Kinda cool!

Review Station Fun!

To provide for some extended review fun, we set up four stations to focus on four subjects for review this week. We had a Nerf ball station, magic cup station, bean bag toss station and alligator dentist game station. Each station focused on one subject for review, and the kids rotated around the stations at the blow of a whistle. They were given 3x5 index cards and they wrote down their points they won in each station. We assigned value to each activity. Points for each tooth pushed on the Alligator that didn't slap his jaws shut, points for each basket made, points for each correct guess of the magic cup station and points for each colored bowl the bean bag made it into.

Snack Theme

Our theme for the snack was on dinosaurs, since our memory work for science was really on the theory of evolution (but who can pass up more chemistry fun!). So we had dinosaur eggs and some veggies for herbivores. Don't worry - we will be tackling the Evolution thing coming up, so stay tuned!

Great fun! Science experiments really bring out the wonder, exploration and awe of God's beautiful creation! Love that! Can you tell us more about those terrific review station games, especially the magic cup and bean bag toss? Thanks for sharing! Mary Henderson

Mary - thank you for stopping by. I'd be happy to. The kids were awarded points for guessing which cup had something under it. It was just silly fun. The bean bag toss was also a points thing. The kids earned different points based on which color cup they got their beanbag in. So we would ask a question for review and then they would answer and take a guess or a toss to see how many points they got. :) Blessings - Colleen